From Bad to Verse

I wrote happy stories

For myself

Hoping their endings

Would encourage happiness in my own.

And I wrote poems for you

To you

Dripping with emotion

My heart bared

Maybe you would read

And then, maybe in pity

(even pity would do)

Throw a few crumbs

To me.

 

And a strange thing happened

The happy stories

Remained just tales

With irritatingly optimistic endings

But the poems

Wove

Into complex patterns

Of emotion

Unhappiness in every weft

And smothered

In their melancholy.

The tales - tales still

Wishful ideas

Dreams

The poems

Became

My burden

Cloyed and stifled

I burnt a few

And from the ashes

Of that love

Emerged

Gaining the strength

To write prose.